Fiber-based sensors have many important applications in a wider range of industries. However, such sensing systems often suffer from a number of common disadvantages, such as complexity of interrogation systems, and vulnerability of the fiber sensing elements and the links between the sensing elements and the interrogating systems to events and stimuli that are not intended to be sensed but that may nevertheless impact the sensor system performance, accuracy and reliability.
A co-pending commonly assigned U.S. patent application entitled “CONFIGURABLE CHIRAL FIBER SENSOR”, which is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety, advantageously discloses various embodiments of a novel configurable chiral fiber sensor solution that are readily configurable for use in a variety of applications (such as applications involving pressure and/or temperature sensing), and that are particularly suitable for applications in which the sensing of a presence, or an absence, of a target sensed event (e.g., specific minimum pressure or minimum temperature) is required. Advantageously, the novel configurable chiral fiber sensor utilized light sources, photodetectors, and related devices for sensor interrogation.
However, there are certain practical applications which require very precise and accurate sensor readings, and/or readings that are very sensitive in the sensed parameter variations, and in which the scope of a total range of sensed parameter values is of lesser or limited importance. It would thus be desirable to provide a configurable chiral fiber sensor with the advantages of the sensor disclosed in the above-incorporated patent application, but that would be operable to satisfy the high precision/responsiveness/sensitivity requirements.